This paper is aimed at presentation and analysis of different approaches to the phenomenon of "feeling for language". The purpose is to demonstrate that this term, although controversial, is of great importance in language acquisition and in the evaluation of language expressions. The topic is discussed in the article with the help of definitions from Kainz, Knobloch, Lewandowski, Juhász, Olt/Disselkamp, and Trad. In the definitions, various facets of language feeling are taken up, such as its relation to intuition, reference to mother tongue and foreign language and individual or collective implications.

This paper examines the discursive means by which authors of scientific texts in the humanities and social sciences take a critical stance on the theses of their colleagues. Focusing on controversy rather than polemics, and using a corpus in French and English borrowed from Language Science, translation and didactics, the paper presents rhetorical figures and linguistic structures that maintain conversational propriety despite the emotionality of disagreement.

Starting from the famous controversy connected with the publication of Emily Dickinson’s manuscripts, this article sets out to explore how the originals were finally restored to the author’s intent. A brief analysis of the first Italian translations followed by some of the most recent attempts will prove that new translations of Dickinson’s output are still necessary.

The subject of many controversies has been both the understanding of the limits of scientific knowledge and the indication of the “boundary” conditions of orders placed for it. In some cases, we are in favor of widening these boundaries in such a way that they can also include religious and quasi-religious beliefs, while in others we are in favor of narrowing them so that knowledge and faith can be clearly distinguished. In these considerations, I cite examples of positions on both issues that have in the past met with both relatively wide acceptance and serious reservations. It is worth taking a closer look at them, because it turns out that in science nothing is decided once and for all, and what seemed to belong to the past sometimes comes back with even greater force. I show this on two examples of contemporary positions on the issue of understanding the limits of scientific knowledge.